Is There Still a Common Good?
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Robert Reich

Peace & Justice
by Robert Reich | January 8, 2022 - 7:31am

— from Robert Reich's Substack

We’ve gone through the shameful first anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and of the refusal of 147 members of Congress (all Republicans) to certify all the e*****rs from states that v**ed for Biden, on the basis of no evidence of fraud. So far, no political figure has been charged with any criminal wrongdoing. We’ve seen 34 v**er-suppression bills enacted by 19 Republican state legislatures; at least 8 give state legislatures the power to disregard e******n outcomes. More than 400 additional v**er suppression measures are now being prepared. And we are now witnessing a struggle in the Senate to reform the filibuster so that v****g rights legislation can be enacted. All of which raises a basic question: Is there still a common good?

I was at the impressionable age of fourteen when I heard John F. Kennedy urge us not to ask what America can do for us but what we can do for America. Seven years later I took a job as a summer intern in the Senate office of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy. It was not a glamorous job, to say the least. I felt lucky when I was asked to run his signature machine. But I told myself that in a very tiny way I was doing something for the good of the country.

That was more than a half century ago. I wish I could say America is a better place now than it was then. Surely our lives are more convenient. Fifty years ago there were no cash machines or smart phones, and I wrote my first book on a typewriter. As individuals, we are as kind and generous as ever. We volunteer in our communities, donate, and help one another. We pitch in during natural disasters and emergencies. We come to the aid of individuals in need. We are a more inclusive society, in that Black people, L***Q people, and women have legal rights they didn’t have a half century ago.

Yet our civic life—as citizens in our democracy, participants in our economy, managers or employees of companies, and members or leaders of organizations—seems to have sharply deteriorated. What we have lost is a sense of our connectedness to each other and to our ideals—the America that John F. Kennedy asked that we contribute to.

Starting in the late 1970s, Americans began talking less about the common good and more about self-aggrandizement. The shift is the hallmark of modern America: From the “Greatest Generation” to the “Me Generation,” from “we’re all in it together” to “you’re on your own.” In 1977, motivational speaker Robert Ringer wrote a book that reached the top of The New York Times bestseller list entitled Looking Out for # 1. It extolled the virtues of selfishness to a wide and enthusiastic audience. The 1987 film Wall Street epitomized the new ethos in the character Gordon Gekko and his signature line, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”

The last five decades have also been marked by growing cynicism and distrust toward all of the basic institutions of American society. There is a wide and pervasive sense that the system as a whole is no longer working as it should. R****m, xenophobia, and religious intolerance are on the rise.

A growing number of Americans feel neglected and powerless. Some are poor, or Black or Latino. Others are white and have been on a downward economic escalator for years. Some have been seduced by demagogues and conspiracy theorists.

Is there a common good that still binds us together as Americans? Yes, and it’s not the whiteness of our skin, or our adherence to Christianity, or the fact that we were born in the United States. We’re bound together by the ideals and principles we share, and the mutual obligations those principles entail.

After all, the U.S. Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general welfare”—not for “me the selfish jerk seeking as much wealth and power as possible.” During the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II, Americans faced common perils that required us to work together for the common good. That good was echoed in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms”—freedom of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear. The common good animated many of us – both white and B***k A******ns—to fight for civil rights and v****g rights in the 1960s. It inspired America to create the largest and most comprehensive system of public education the world had ever seen. And it moved many of us to act against the injustice of the Vietnam War, and others of us to serve bravely in that besotted conflict.

Americans sharply disagree about exactly what we want for America or for the world. But if we are to participate in the same society we must agree on how we deal with our disagreements, our obligations under the law, and our commitment to democracy.

It’s our agreement to these principles that connects us, not agreement about where these principles lead. Some of us may want to prohibit a******ns because we believe life begins at birth; others of us believe individuals should have the right to determine what happens to their bodies. Some of us want stricter environmental protections; others, more lenient. We are free to take any particular position on these and any other issues. But as political equals in this democracy, we are bound to accept the outcomes even if we dislike them.

Our central obligation as citizens is to preserve, fortify, and protect our democratic form of government. We must defend the right to v**e and ensure that more citizens are heard, not fewer. We must require that presidents be elected by the will of the people, and prevent political parties and state legislatures from disregarding the popular v**e. We must get big money out of politics so the moneyed interests don’t have more political power than the rest of us.

Democracy doesn’t require us to agree. It requires us to agree only on preserving and protecting democracy. This meta-agreement is the essence of the common good.

Those now attacking American democracy are attacking the common good that binds us together. They are attacking America.

We must join together — progressives and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, inhabitants of blue states and of red states, business leaders as well as leaders of nonprofits and of the public sector — to rescue American democracy from those who now seek to destroy it. There is no time to waste.

Your thoughts?

Insider
Alia Shoaib
Sun, January 9, 2022, 11:20 AM

Several of Fox News's top hosts served as a "Cable Cabinet of unofficial advisers," according to the Washington Post.

In recent weeks, the House select committee investigating the J****** 6 Capitol attack released numerous text messages from various Fox News hosts to former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows on the day of the i**********n.

A former senior administration official, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity, said that the influence extended into the very heart of the president's administration, and Trump would sometimes dial Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs into Oval Office staff meetings.

"A lot of it was PR — what he should be saying and how he should be saying it; he should be going harder against wearing masks or wh**ever," Stephanie Grisham, former press secretary to President Donald Trump, told The Post. "And they all have different opinions, too."

The J****** 6 c*******e revealed that Fox News Hosts Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Brian Kilmeade texted Meadows as the i**********n unfolded, showing the closeness between the cable news network and the White House.

The texts indicated that Hannity had direct knowledge about Trump's strategy for the day of the e*******l v**e count and had concerns about his plan, the committee said.

Fox News hosts had a direct number to reach Trump and administration officials often posed challenges for West Wing staffers, former administration officials told The Washington Post.

Grisham told The Post how highly the former president valued the opinions of Fox hosts.

"There were times the president would come down the next morning and say, 'Well, Sean [Hannity] thinks we should do this,' or, 'Judge Jeanine [Pirro] thinks we should do this,'" Grisham told the paper.

Grisham told the paper that Fox News hosts weighed in on everything from personnel to messaging strategy.

The Washington Post said that several of Fox News's top hosts served as a "Cable Cabinet of unofficial advisers."

Alyssa Farah, a former White House communications director, told the Post that staffers would "try to get ahead of what advice you thought he was going to be given by these people" because their opinions "could completely change his mind on something."

Farah told the paper that Trump particularly valued the opinions of Lou Dobbs, Hannity, Ingraham, and Pirro.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-dial-fox-news-hosts-182046021.html

By Dave Haynie ( ever so slightly altered)

Conservatives? I’m completely fine with true conservatives. Honest, hard-working people who share a common belief in science, objective reality, statesmanship, and working together to solve a common problem? Yeah, I’m good with them within my Family and circle of friends. No h**e whatsoever. In fact, it’s respect and even some love — I can learn from a reasoned discussion between friends. We don’t have to agree on the severity of every problem, we don’t have to agree about the solutions to those problems. We do have to agree on the rule of law, on our democratic constitutional republic, on the rights of every American regardless of their race, color, g****r, or sexual orientation. And, we do. I socialize with many of these folks on a daily basis.

But, sadly, instead of conservatives, these days we have those who follow a crass/boorish former president. This collective of liars, white nationalists, KKKers, conmen, and shameless sycophants trade off the term conservative as a brand name, not a political or economic philosophy. Many of these are people who can’t tell the t***h to save their lives, can’t even recognize the t***h. They’re apparently in full thrall to a self-aggrandizing conman and serial liar ex-president.

These are the people opposing our democratic constitutional republic. They’re those who stormed the Capitol on J****** 6th, 2021. They’re the ones passing laws to prevent people of color from v****g in red states. They’re the ones passing laws that will make it legal for red state legislatures to entirely toss out the v**e of the people for no valid reason. They’re the people who actually believe the silly fantasy that Donald Trump didn’t lose the 2020 e******n, and lose “bigly”.

There’s no reasoning with them. Like my Dad and many others of that era, who fought totalitarian f*****m overseas, there are those of us who will fight every effort to k**l America and install a dictator here. Revile is a perfect term for how I feel about anyone who’d like to k**l our democratic constitutional republic. Sad is how I feel for those too mentally weak to see through the t***sparent lies of the fool that is our infamous former president..

Remember the start. Wear face masks, six feet apart, sanitize everything with hand sanitizer and we will lock down for two weeks to flatten the curve.

Well now, six feet apart only counts if you are standing.
Face masks must be worn indoors unless you are seated and eating or drinking. Of course then you can be literally face to face.
Hand sanitizer can still be found, but they discovered it doesn't help much.
Face mask are also proven to be virtually totally useless, but still demanded.
We now have three different v*****es available. Except they aren't v*****es. Just drugs that might help you if you catch C***d, might lesson the time you have C***d or its severity, but do nothing to prevent you from getting C***d, or passing it around.
These drugs were rushed through the approval process and into the general population despite the worst track record of any real v*****e ever proposed for bad side effects and deaths.
The Government is trying to now mandate drugs here, there, and everywhere they think they can get away with. This despite those same side effects rearing their ugly heads. Deaths, and severe reactions, some life long disabilities.
Meanwhile simple over the counter drugs that build up a natural resistance to diseases and C***d are never officially mentioned.
Drugs that have been proven effective and safe and cheap and have been shown as effective preventatives and cures and have virtually no side effects are not only ignored by the Government, but people and doctors etc, that promote then are shunned and blacklisted and much more.
And those with the experimental Vax are the most probable cause of the raging variants.
And they are also trying to force these drugs onto children as young as five and more to come. With absolutely no testing as to the long term effects of these drugs on children, like life threatening disabilities and potential fertility problems.
And with all of the job lose and evictions and mandates for us citizens, the Government is letting in millions of untested and often C***d carriers, illegal invaders across our southern border to run amok throughout America.

The latest is hospitals telling workers, if you test positive but have no symptoms, come to work anyway. Now that is insane.

Want to see how far they can and eventually will go, look a the formerly free countries like Australia and Austria and Canada and many more and a growing list.

Meanwhile in countries were Ivermectin and HCQ are used for alternative medical issues, they have minimal C***d issues. Because it is a dual use drug and it works.

And all our Government can do is blame in on those that didn't get the shots that don't work and demand we get the dangerous shots or else face mandates, eviction, and not allowed to go into stores and travel will soon be ended for non v**xers. All for no valid reason.

LGB FJB

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